> 2

My manager & I happened to leave office at the same time today.

"So, any plans for the evening?" she asked.

I knew for sure that I had plans because I'd that vague sense of excitement + anxiety about how the evening would play out. I racked my brain, and then had to laugh when I finally figured it out.

"Nothing at all," I said.

Odd how an evening at home with the husband still has my sub-sub-conscious feeling like it's an occasion. 

I suppose it really hasn't been very long since we've been married, much as it feels like it's been forever (and then some).

Facebook's Latest Shenanigans

If the day ever comes when we think searching through our Facebook friends' opinions on restaurants, music et al is going to give us results that are more relevant/valid than a YouTube/Amazon/Google recommendation/result, just shoot me.

#1 People joined groups/added interests ten thousand years ago and forgot about them, and/or just 'Like' whatever their friends say to like, so that aforementioned friends can win whatever ridiculous Facebook contest marketers are thrusting on them this week. The groups/pages people note they like on Facebook? They probably like them the same way they're friends with their friends list on Facebook. Which brings me to...

# 2 'Friends' is a really loose definition for the contacts on your Facebook list, so unless you're the gossip queen/statistician-in-making who wants to know everyone's preference on everything just because, why wouldn't you just ask *specific* people whose opinions you respected? I definitely don't trust the same people's opinions when it comes to a restaurant vs a book. And to be perfectly honest, I usually find people's opinions on Twitter/Yelp/Amazon/YouTube. I find people's look-at-my-life-and-be-jealous pictures & updates on Facebook. Which brings me to...

#3 I've seen what comes up on my Facebook feed. There's no possible way I'm finding answers there, unless the question was 'Ripped-off sentimental/funny quotes' or 'Who had the best party everrr' or 'Who loves their husband/wife the most'.

I don't even know why I'm so outraged by Facebook's announcement of their new Social Graph, but oh my God, it makes me want to shout. Twitter hashtags make sense, Google search makes sense, FB social graph is just... at best, pointless.

I'm sure marketers will be all over it a year from now, and Facebook will release stats on earned impressions generating a higher conversion rate than paid impressions, and so on, but meh.

Happy Friday

Funny side-effect of my job - I find myself working on tech things I'd never even heard of until, et voile, there I am waist-deep in them. CNAMES, A-records, Terradata, ODBC, whaaa?  

I'm like a non-native speaker with a dictionary, finding that each definition needs several more look-ups before it can be understood. Except without a dictionary. 

So it's more like someone reading a book in a completely different language with some English words peppered in, trying to make sense of the alien words based on the context in which they appear. I feel a little victory kick every time I figure out a new term, though the more logical part of me wonders why I couldn't just use that brain space for Spanish or German or something more fun than Nerd-ese. 

But, but, but, today a tech guy walking me through some obscure database setup process told me how impressed he was with my, and I quote, 'intuitive tech skill.' He wanted to know if I had coding experience. Right. I'm barely logical by human standards; if I tried telling a computer what I wanted, the poor thing would crash in despair. 

Still, despite the occasional victory kicks, I've been feeling like a frog trying to fly... so his comment totally made my day. Geekjoy maximum.